


Alms for the Wretched

by Zigadenus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Christmas, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-09-19 17:47:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17006268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigadenus/pseuds/Zigadenus
Summary: After seeing death, you can see thestrals.  But what sights are revealed when gazing uponthestrals-- or when they have gazed back, upon you?  A winter tale inspired byQuiet, an illustration byMyWitch.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MyWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyWitch/gifts).
  * Inspired by [25 Days of Drawing - 2018](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16795588) by [MyWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyWitch/pseuds/MyWitch). 



> _Hello, friends. Because we're friends, I feel like I should warn you:_
> 
> _This one is probably going to hurt._

Gloaming.  There was rain or ice or sleet or some nefarious combination of all three through much of the day, but it slacked off in the course of his walk down from the castle.  Now it’s just the wind.  Are there sinus cavities in your cheekbones?  He thinks there might be, and maybe that’s what makes his ears hurt, deep inside.  Or else he’s been clenching his jaw too hard.  Except that’s his permanent expression of late, and this pain differs from the headache that typically manifests first at the base of his skull before working its way forward until he longs to rip at his hair or claw his forearms or curl moaning against the violent ache behind his orbits.  Such antics conducted at the high table would be rather detrimental to whatever tenuous authority he manages to maintain, so he will clench his teeth tight and focus on breathing, focus on the silent panorama he can build in his head, a place where the garrulous recriminating chatter of students and the din and clatter of their meals cannot touch him.

Sometimes, he thinks it might even work.

He’s very good at lying to himself.

Take this evening, for instance.  If anyone asks (no one will), he has half a dozen excuses at the ready, and he believes at least a couple of them, but the truth of the matter probably lies closer to his growing intolerance of presiding over their sullen glares.  He is absent from meals more often than not, of late.  It’s just as well – morale is better amongst staff and students alike, when they can nourish themselves without his looming over them all like some twisted monarch. 

Staff eat at the house tables, now.  He invoked this decree under the guise of disciplinary reforms, but his real purpose — one of them, at least — was to keep an eye on the malcontents.  He does not mind that this ploy is transparent to all and sundry.  Let them think that he is paranoid of them all.  He is.  But really, it’s just that he doesn’t want an audience to the pranks the elves have taken to laying in the serving dishes.  The humiliating knowledge that you are an object of loathing is always a little easier to chew if no one is watching you eat it.

His stomach clenches.  _Did_ he eat today?  Breakfast?  A stale bagel from Tesco’s.  Or was that yesterday?  It doesn’t matter, it’s probably just the cold.  It infiltrates the folds of his cloak, to creep in past his buttons and laces, to settle along his spine, stealing its way deep into the long bones of his limbs.  Why not chill his vital organs as well?  If it can set his fingers to cramping, why not smooth muscle?  He sighs.  Maybe he’s not as good at lying to himself as he wants to think he is.

Dinner ( _their_ dinner, anyway) had smelled good.  Some kind of fish.

It put him in mind of the chippy, down one of the better streets back home.  Not a really good street, mind, but the sort where he and Lily could wander without him having to split a knuckle on someone’s teeth, for slagging her off as a trollop. 

Back home. 

Been a long while since he thought of it that way.

Cokeworth.  Back in Cokeworth.  Back in his cage.  With the rats.

But it did.  He caught a whiff of dinner, walking down the spiralled staircase from Dumbledore’s office, and his distractible brain had flooded him with memories of hot salted chips, and picking the last greasy bits of crisped batter from the corners of folded newsprint.

So he’d walked on, out into the dusk and the rain and the wind.

Damnable wind.  If it kept up, there’d likely be broken tree branches for Hagrid to deal with come morning.  There’s some scrub hazel here by the paddock, and it’s not yet too dark to see that the branches are coated in ice.  The paths here are grit, but all the flagstone up in the castle proper will be treacherous; he’ll have to leave word to put down salt… No.  Best just to trust to Hagrid’s competence.  If he tells him to do something, it becomes an order, and it’s a civic duty to disobey the Headmaster’s orders.

Except for preventing the Carrows’ excesses, this school runs perfectly fine without him.  Certainly much better than if he chose to take a hand in its governance.

He does, however, have an important role to play: he is a mascot, a rallying point, a common enemy.

He wonders if Dumbledore planned it that way.

Wouldn’t put it past him.

He re-adjusts his collar, hunches his shoulders up.  It doesn’t help, the cold is winning.  It’s time to choose: back inside where it’s warm and dismal, or out here where things hurt so badly he’s finally convinced he’s still alive?

Because, see, he’s been wondering about that lately.  He has too much time to think, lying sleepless in the dark.  Thinking about horcruxes, thinking about Lily’s son, thinking about whether you would even notice, if there were chinks or cracks where you might be missing a bit of your soul.  Where does it go, if you don’t put it in a horcrux?

Maybe that’s why he’s so cold all the time.  That sick empty cold that won’t go away, no matter how close he sits to the fire.

Cold.  Too damn cold.  If he is going to stay out here, like the numbskull he evidently is, then he ought to at least get out of the wind, cast a warming charm.

He picks his way up over the stile.  The steps are icy, and he slips on the way down, but there’s no one to see his undignified landing, nor hear his muffled grunt of pain.  Well, no one except the thestrals.  He didn’t realize they were here; he’d thought Hagrid had let them down into the wooded paddock on the other side of the dale, but perhaps he’d wanted them closer, what with the weather and the need to have them to hand when the students leave for hols.  He heaves himself to his feet, brushes dirt and wet grass from his cloak and trousers, and surveys his audience.

The one that’s eyeing him is the one with the wicked scar on her haunch.  He’s sure of it.  She’s bolder than other members of the herd.  Probably that accounts for the scar: tangled with something meaner than herself.  He wishes he’d thought to bring something.  She’ll take a dead mouse or a rat from him, and sometimes butt her forehead up against his spread palm.  Or at least she used to.  He hasn’t been down to visit them, since he’s been back here.  Since the Astronomy Tower.

She seems skittish, hesitant.  She used to come right away.  Not trotting, never anything so obvious.  No, they’d just calmly ignore each other, yet before long she’d wander over with apparent aimlessness, and be poking her narrow scaly beak into the folds of his cloak, sussing out his pockets and any delicacies he might just happen to have in them. 

She is not calmly ignoring him today. 

He watches her rustle up her wings.  She tosses her head a bit, stares fixedly at him.  Walks off a pace or two.  Turns back.  Wings rise, fall.  Settle back in place across her back.

“I didn’t bring anything.  Sorry.”    

Her head snaps back.  Eyes lock to his.  He can see her eyes.  It should be too dark for that, surely?  Must be the last bit of twilight, reflecting in the tapetum lucidum at the back of her eyeballs.  He hadn’t known their eyes glowed in the dark, but then he’d never thought about it before, nor had he ever come out here at night. 

She sees in the dark, then.  And sees the Dark?

But he’s had the bitter fear-stench of death and horror on him more than once, when he’s come visiting.  Perhaps she’s only forgotten him.  Whatever.  He doesn’t care, not really.  He doesn’t let himself finish forming his other thought, that it would have been nice to feel another living body close by, to have had her beg a scratch, to know that something breathing wanted his company.

He seats himself on the bottom step of the stile, down out of the wind.  Casts a warming charm.  It helps, a little.  Doesn’t touch that deep cold, but then nothing does.  That deep cold is just a constant presence.  Even if it eases off a bit (at the edge of sleep, sometimes, or when he loses himself in solving some problem) it always comes back.  

That deep cold is inevitable.  As a lot of things have been.  As more will become.


	2. Chapter 2

She paces back and forth in agitation, or consternation.  Something like that.  Her head keeps weaving, side to side, as if sizing him up.  Or maybe she can’t see him after all? 

“ _Lumos,_ ” he whispers, and his wand pushes back a bit of the encroaching night.  Not too bright – he doesn’t want anyone in the castle to see.  Just a bit of faint, ghostly light, enough to throw his shadow out across the ground, enough to catch her eyeshine, green and vaguely threatening.

More than vaguely threatening. 

She paws, once, at the freezing ground, but it’s a show:  her indecision has passed, and the next time her hoof strikes into the dirt, it’s the incipient move in a deliberate advance.

They approach their prey like this.  He’s seen them walk down rabbits, pace by steady pace, until they dart down, snap them up in their beaks.  A swift toss of their heads breaks the spine, and an instant later they’ll fling the little furry body up in the air, before snatching it with an almost careless kind of grace.

He always wondered why the rabbits never ran.  

He doesn’t need to wonder anymore.

It’s nice that you can still learn things, he supposes, as he tries to break free of her gaze, tries to blink, tries to rise, tries to _anything_.

He’s aware of his limbs trembling, somewhere distant, far away.  Muscles contracting, antagonizing against his bones, pulling his seated body into a marionette’s contortions. It’s not him doing this, he’s pretty sure of that, because he’d like nothing more than to straighten his arms, his legs, to pull himself into some kind of defensive posture. 

He doesn’t resent her.  She’s a wild thing, harnessed occasionally, but not domesticated.  She’s just following her nature, and this was his own stupidity.

Still, he wishes she’d get on with it, instead of bearing down upon him with whatever implacable fae magic her eyes contain.  Thinking about what’s happening makes it worse, but he can’t turn his brain off.  His body is no longer under his own control, and his eyes won’t look anywhere else, and even his sense of hearing is gone; there’s just this ringing in his ears that isn’t loud enough to drown his thoughts.  It’s like the Cruciatus curse, what’s happening to him now, except he can’t feel it.  Small mercy.  There’s only a hard shuddering inside his core and the sterile knowledge that magic can make opposing muscles contract hard enough to break the bones between them.  Maybe that’s what she’s doing, tenderizing him?

Her face is so close he can see the hair shafts or pinfeathers or whatever they are, that bristle up between keratin plates.  Her scent is overpowering.  Not just the rotting-meat smell as she clicks her beak open, closed, but that darker musty odour.  A snake-like scent.  He shudders again, visions of Nagini’s bulging coils rising unbidden in his mind.  His absolute certainty that he can see the outline of a foot, in the way the chandeliers’ candlelight gleams off her scales.  _Severus, please!  We’re friends!_

Not anymore, if ever.

People should know better than to invoke friendship where he is concerned:  He is hard on his friends.  He’ll get them killed by running his mouth, he’ll sit idly by and watch them die, he’ll murder them himself.  Two quick words, some green light, that’s all it took.  _Severus… please…_

Minerva’s smart, she’s figured it out.  Be his enemy, not his friend.  Good, because he doesn’t want to know what she’ll say, at the end.  _Coward_ , maybe.  She’s thrown it at him a few times, already.  Fine, he is.  Better to have their hatred, their scorn, than beseeching cries when there is nothing he can do.

They ring in his ears, louder than the silence, these remembered accusations from the dead, from the betrayed, from the hopeless – and they cannot or will not believe that he is one of them: hopeless, because this is too much, too large for him to accomplish alone; betrayed, at Dumbledore’s hand, left behind with everything he’d ever believed or hoped for crushed to dust, yet told he must go onward, onward into death and ruin.

Staring into the depths of her lambent eyes, he knows it for the truth.  Knows it with a cold certainty, has known it for weeks, months, but has carefully avoided thinking it. 

He thinks it now.

Finish it, he thinks.  I’m ready.  There’s still work to do, but it doesn’t matter.  Not to me, not anymore.  There’s nothing left, anyway, is there?

She snorts, a puff of warm air across his startled face; it makes him blink.  He hadn’t realized he could, but she’s released him from her gaze, and he feels the cold again, hears the wind and the skeletal rattle of breaking branches. 

She ducks her head, nudges her forehead against his sternum, hard.  And then she pivots, whirls away, to vanish beyond the gentle glow of his wand, nothing more than a clatter of hoof-beats disappearing into the night. 

He rises, swaying.  Hauls himself up to climb the stile.  Reconsiders.

A brush with something like that, it should make you feel relief, shouldn’t it?  Or thankfulness to still be alive, or even a delayed rush of terror.  Something.  There should be something inside, shouldn’t there?

All he’s learned tonight is the truth of matters: he doesn’t care, anymore, if he lives or dies.  But until he does, he supposes there are still duties to be performed, and he is nothing if not dutiful.  He has had most of a lifetime of servitude, one master or another, or both.  He is given orders, he serves.  And so he ascends the stile, ascends the rough path up through the weeds and heather, ascends slick staircases up to the parapet walk.  Slinks inside beneath a disillusionment spell, trudges up the stairs to Dumbledore’s office. 

He pulls his cloak off, drapes it over the back of his chair.  It might dry by morning, although there would be more chance of that if he raked up the coals and stoked the fire.  He seats himself on the foot of the bed, and considers whether he has energy for this task.  Is it a necessity, or just a creature comfort that he might do without for a while?

The longer he stares at them, the more the glowing embers remind him of inescapable eyes.

 

“You’re a terrible patient.”  She’s glaring at him, some woman he doesn’t recognize, although her disapproving expression is familiar territory.  “No one else will tell you so, because they’re medical professionals, but I’m not hampered by those particular ethics, so:  You’re a terrible patient, downright awful.”

No, he can’t place her at all.  His dream-self is unencumbered by these questions and says something in response, but he misses it, too overwhelmed by the paradox of being two separate people, himself and the gaunt, hollow-eyed wreck reclining against the pillows that she’s leaning over to re-arrange with merciless authority. 

His dream-self admires her breasts while she’s accomplishing this.  Odd.  Odd that he can think some of this self’s thoughts but clearly not all of them, because he doesn’t know where that flirtatious remark comes from, the one that makes her colour up and blink so rapidly, but he does know that little smirk on his dream-self’s chapped lips, knows the feel of it, knows the little ‘heh’ of laughter that rattles around in his skull, an expression he thought he’d forgotten, an emotion he’d thought lost to the abyss of choices he’d made.

He wakes, his sides damp with cold sweat.  Well, as nightmares go, it’s a step up from the ones that drove him to Dreamless Sleep several months ago.  He casts _Lumos_ , looks over at his bedside table.  The phial’s untouched.  He’s still in his clothing, still in his boots.  That’s right, he’d laid down here to stare up at the ceiling stones and just be absent, just be quiet, just for a little while.  Must have fallen asleep.  He rolls over, extracts his pocket-watch.  Nearly three, too late for even half a dose of the potion, but too early to be about.  Except, it’s early enough that no one else is apt to be.

Perhaps he should take this opportunity to steal away from the castle, fetch some bread or cheese, or even a dozen eggs to hard-boil in one of his cauldrons.  Although that is beginning to sound suspiciously like work, and he has enough to do, and he’s just tired of it all.  He wishes he could afford the simple luxury of ordering tea and toast from the kitchens, but they’d probably poison it, and then he’d be put to the trouble of trying to find the appropriate antidote and… All around, perhaps it’s better to loosen his clothing, pull the featherbed up around his shoulders to cut some of the chill, and just try to get back to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

He is aware of his torso gently swaying, aware of bright moonlight gleaming on heavy snowdrifts which are pillowed up so that they seem to disappear into the high hills, out beyond the expansive window in which he is standing.  Aware too — acutely, even — of the warm body cradled against his chest, of a slight fluttery heartbeat, of the milky-sweet smell of her skin.  So soft; he trails an index across the swell of her cheek, brushes the downy curl back from her china-doll eyebrows.  Little clumsy hand, fingers outstretched, each terminating with a tiny perfect nail… How can something so miniscule be so exquisitely formed?  Chubby fingers questing/grasping, circling his own, squeezing.

Squeeze a little harder and he’s certain his heart will stop.

Padding, quietly through the dark.  His feet know where they’re going.  No mysteries in the shadows.  His shadows.  Pride or satisfaction, as if of ownership.

“Is she alright?”

“No.  Couldn’t get her to stop crying, so I made the executive decision to poison her and end our misery.”  He re-arranges the covers, careful not to allow the night’s chill to waft in beneath them.  
  
“Oh.”  A yawn.  “Okay, then, s’long as you did a good job of it.  No half measures, y’know.”

 

He remembers this dreamed exchange while he is standing before his shaving glass, and is surprised to see the twitch of a smile in his mirror.  It makes his face look alien, some stranger that his hands are become too familiar with.  It leaves a funny kind of ache in his midsection, because he cannot remember if he has ever observed himself smiling before.  Photographs, perhaps?  Although he doesn’t know when any might have been taken; surely he didn’t smile during the school sessions.  Didn’t smile during school, period, not where anyone but Lily would have seen.  And there would not have been any photographs from before, from Cokeworth.  He wipes his face free of lather, and essays another expression in the glass.  Pulls up the corners of his lips.  He must be using the wrong muscles, because it looks more like a grimace or a snarl. 

Well, but then that’s probably more fitting anyway — it’s the December All Staff meeting today.

He presses his fingers to the back of his neck, futile attempt to relieve tension already digging its’ claws into the muscles at the base of his skull.  Lets his eyes fall closed; escape, just for a moment.

Milky-sweet smell of her skin.

Evidently you can dream scents.  Even ones you have no prior experience of? 

He shakes his head, as if to rattle these musings free of their moorings, set them drifting away into the murky waters of subconscious from whence they sailed in.  He is no likely harbour for them.  He encompasses only rocky coastline, or perhaps an iceberg lurking in the dark.  Sharp immovable things that will tear holes in idle daydreams, scuttle them into the cold, down where the light never penetrates.

Coffee has lost its efficacy, but he boils water and pours over grounds anyway.  The clean hot bitterness of it cuts through the cloying sweetness of the wit-sharpening draught.  Lately, the potion makes his face a little numb, just there beneath his jaw.  He needs to cut back on it, but he also needs to face the Staff, and why should he worry over his long-term health?  If Potter doesn’t end him, Malfoy will, or Avery, or McGonagall, or God knows even Flitwick might.  Enemies on all sides, every side.  The only place he is truly safe is beside the one person who still needs him, although ‘person’ might be placing too much hope in whatever fragment of a human soul still lives there in the Darkness. 

He contemplates the grit in the bottom of his cup.  Shrugs.  Swigs it back.  It’ll probably lodge in his teeth.  He tells himself he doesn’t care.  He’s spent damn near two decades telling himself he doesn’t care.  Why start caring now, when all hope is lost, when all that’s left is to play the match out to stalemate?  White king and black circling each other across the board, until all the pawns are slain, rooks toppled, knights sacrificed to failed gambits.  He rinses his cup, and supposes that he is one of the latter, constrained to complicated L-shaped manoeuvres that allow him to slink behind enemy lines.  He wonders how Riddle plays chess.  Dumbledore tended to sacrifice his knights early in play.

He pulls his teaching robes on, checks the time.  He is always checking the time.  Hilarious, really, now that time’s meaning has been lost to inevitability, he is suddenly fixated upon its measure.  But he has to be, because otherwise his mind will wander out, and he’ll lose his way in random musings, elaborate metaphors, philosophical questions that have never before tempted him.  And dream-worlds, now, intruding into waking, when he should be paying attention to the webs of plots he is meant to be carefully navigating.  Can’t step on the wrong one.

He re-arranges his cravat, pins it in place.  Fingers fumble, just a moment.  Only a cheap peridot in silver, this old pin, but his twenty-year-old self had been pleased to unwrap it in the Staff Room, had given McGonagall awkward, stammering thanks.  Too unused to civilities to be detached and eloquent, and too sentimental to throw it by the wayside when his Gringotts’ account could stretch to finer.  Sentimental?  No.  He grits his teeth, swallows.  No, he wears it now as silent rebuke, or this is what he tells himself.  It meant something to him, her starchy friendship and the dry, ironic jokes they’d shared over the years, but evidently he’d misinterpreted things again, saw more meaning in gestures than had ever been intended.

He was a fool.  He has often been, yet he doesn’t seem to learn, so perhaps he is deserving, that it hurts anew each time.

Hurts?

No.  He is doing his duty.  _What of my soul?_  

Stop it, he tells himself.  He’d made his choices, he’d placed himself in Dumbledore’s hands.  If he truly trusted, if he had faith in Albus’ wisdom, he is a blackguard for doubting now.  This is why he deserves their spite and scorn, because he doubts, because he second-guesses, because he laments his own fate.  Does he?  He was ready last night, in the ice and the dark and the depths of her eyes.

Maybe there is some grand plan, some destiny.  It wasn't his time, wasn't his ending, because he still has tasks to accomplish.  The sword to Potter.  He wonders if he can convey Dumbledore’s parting message by patronus, finish it all in one go.  Does the timing matter so very much?

He considers the question through the Carrows’ ugly diatribes, through Sprout’s tight-lipped report of winter examination scores, through McGonagall’s venom-laced needling, through Flitwick’s dour tone of resignation, through Hagrid’s noncommittal grunts.  None of it requires his attention.  His sole function today is to quell an argument before it gets started:  “Professor McGonagall, this is a _school_.  The board pays you to teach students, not to _decorate_.  In fact, as this appears a point of contention, I believe we will dispense with the holiday décor entirely.”

It causes the expected uproar, and he leans his chin on his palm while he pretends to listen to them.  When he reckons they’re nearly ready to hurl invectives which he will be forced to take notice of, if only because the Carrows will report, he stands to draw his hands down in a sharp motion of suppression.  Fascinating, it even works.  Hooch’s mouth is still hanging open.    

“Enough.  If you will insist upon it, you will conduct your _festivities_ in a purely voluntary capacity.  The Board is not paying you to _lead carolling_ , or _enchant mistletoe_ , or the hundred other useless things you waste your time with.  Your _leisure time_ , is that understood?”

McGonagall sniffs.  “Naturally, Headmaster.”  Oh, she twists that word so well.  He could admire her for it, truly.  “We are only too pleased to volunteer our time.  It would, after all, take a special sort of scoundrel, to be so petty, cruel, and vindictive, as to begrudge the students in our care a bit of holiday spirit, don’t you think?”

As he is considering whether to respond to this, he feels again the ghost of little fingers.  Solid, firm, more real in that moment than this farce he is playing out on Dumbledore’s orders.  He twitches McGonagall an expression that might be an absent smile, gathers his folios, and dismisses them all.

He would like some quiet.  Or a dose of Dreamless Sleep, perhaps.  By Headmaster Black’s report, he will have work to do tonight.  He still has not come to a decision on whether or not he will respect Dumbledore’s notion of timing.  He would like this to be ended, he would like to be finished.  The sooner the better.

But then, thinking of things his dreaming self had no way of knowing, he almost wonders.  He almost isn’t sure.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so very sorry I'm behind on responding to your comments. I'm going to try to catch up over the next couple days; things are/have been a bit mad on my end, and I've been putting my available time into writing, because I figure that's better thanks for your kindness in leaving me some thoughts, than anything else I could offer.

No, not tonight.  They’ve moved again, Black doesn’t know where.  Useless. 

So it doesn’t matter if he’d intended to betray Dumbledore’s trust, or not.  He has no opportunity to do so; he won’t face that test yet.

More waiting. 

More time for his mind to betray his intentions.  More time for the spectre of his broken ambition to rally, to dig in at his stoicism, chip away at his resolution, to whisper insidiously, asking why.  Why me.  Why this.  What of my soul.

Well, what of it?

He tells himself that he knows he isn’t worth anything beyond his utility.  He’s always known his value:  knew himself worthless when he cast himself prostrate at Dumbledore’s feet, begged him, told him he’d do anything, give anything.  The ‘anything’ he’d offered Dumbledore, well, he’d got back equal value on it, hadn’t he?  And now?  Now, when it comes to it, now he’ll play his master false, the double-crossing blackguard that they always said he was? 

Maybe.

After all, Dumbledore double-crossed him first.

 _Your way forward is clear_ , he’d said.  _Help me protect Lily’s son_.

Well.  Albus hadn’t said ‘forever’.  He hadn’t said anything of the sort.

And, he thinks, contemplating the opalescent shimmer in the dose of Dreamless Sleep he’s poured himself, neither had he.

But why?  Why renege on his promises to Dumbledore _now_ , now when there’s nothing left?  If he’d meant to betray him, he could’ve done so that night in the tower.  Laughed, spat on him, walked away.  Or knocked him unconscious, even, thrown him at Riddle’s feet.  That night, he’d still had options, he’d still had a way out of this Machiavellian nightmare, this chess match of death and bitter glory for wasted kings.  False options, though.  All of them.  He hadn’t anything to live for, there had been no temptation to run, to flee, to act other than he had been bid.  And now? 

Now, it’s the same as it has always been.  That one option, the one that’s always tantalized him, the only one that’s ever drawn him, swayed him, set his mind racing with something like desire – that one option, the only one that’s left to him.

Does he care, if he dies with honour?

He’ll still be dead.

He doesn’t think the difference will matter much to his congealing corpse.

A little asphodel in his nightcap, maybe.  Poison is a coward’s way.  Must be predestination, that he’s always had an affinity for the discipline, always a bit of a knack with brewing. 

He consumes a withered apple while he’s debating, and perhaps the mundane task of chewing is an answer in and of itself: he is still bothering to nourish himself, sometimes.  He swallows the potion unadulterated, the argument settled for now.  Perhaps he’ll revisit the question again.  He has had this conversation with himself too many times of late, to think that the matter is closed or decided for good.  No, they have accomplished only détente, his duty and his desire to self-immolate.  No: Not self-immolation, not quite.  That implies too much passion, he thinks, as he pulls on his nightshirt, then yards the covers up to his shoulders.  He just wants to stop, that’s all.

He just wants out.

Not because he can envision anything better, not because he yearns for anything different, anything more.

He just wants everything to stop fucking hurting.

 

“Just a little tree.” Wheedling.  He’s told her a thousand times before, wheedling is unattractive, gauche, and won’t get her what she wants, except that it quite obviously does, and so there is a little tree in the darkest corner of the room.  Only it’s not the darkest corner anymore, it is practically glaring in its brilliance, the soft flicker of fairy lights magnified through the charmed icicles, and reflecting in the mirrors of the few silver and glass ornaments she’d hung.  

“I want to celebrate.  I’m tired of this ceaseless mourning.  Why are we living at all if it’s only endless regret and recrimination, a never-ending plea for the grave?”

He tells her it’s not his choice, and she’d made hers.  And could unmake it, if she wanted.  But she makes it again, rests her head on his shoulder.  He can smell cinnamon on her breath.  “It is too your choice.  They can’t compel you to be a martyr, not anymore.  Not now.  _They_ don’t own you anymore.  _I_ do.  I said it, you know.”

He knows.  He leans into her cinnamon lips.  Apologizes, in this gentle way that he has learned.

 

His legs are tangled in the sheets, heavy weight against his abdomen, his chest, can’t draw a deep breath.  Hands, stronger than they look, pinning his wrists.  Her wild hair falling in his eyes as she ducks her head again, bites at his lips.   Runnel of sweat between her breasts, swaying above him.

“This isn’t so bad, right?  I’m not so bad at this.”

He can’t answer, because she’s clenched, somehow, clenched him up inside herself.  And then she’s drawing back, plunging down again, and it’s pain-pleasure-madness and all he can do is gasp, gasp _Please_.

Please stop.  Please continue.  Please stay.

He doesn’t last as long as he should, he knows that much.  Tells her he’s sorry.

“Sorry?  Why?  I’m pretty well pleased.  Erm, if you enjoyed this, I mean.  Did you?  Only, I’ve never, I didn’t want to be rubbish, did you actually—I mean, of course you did, I uh, I need to wipe up and all, only… umn, was I any good?”

She can do things like that, and she wants to know if she’s any good.  “Magnificent.”

“Oh good.”  He smothers her relieved smile with a kiss of his own, drags her down into the pillows, but not before she manages to tell him that “I’ve bought at least a dozen books, you know, to get the theory down.”

Theory.  He should be ashamed of himself, ashamed of enfolding this exquisite creature in his arms, ashamed of the smell of their bodies and the use to which they’ve put them.  Theory.  Things are not so theoretical anymore, hypotheses he’d entertained in idle hours finally put to the test, and demonstrably _not_ falsified. 

I’m sorry, he begins to say, but those aren’t the words that emerge.  “You could bring your toothbrush, you know, when you come next weekend.  Change of clothes.”

“Am I?  Coming next weekend?”

“Bring along your dozen books, and we’ll see what I can accomplish, with a little swotting up.”

 

It’s warm beneath the feather bed.  He never feels properly warm anymore, not for long, because he can’t stay here, can’t stay where seeds from his dreamworlds might sprout, might germinate and enfold him in verdure.  No, he must rise, emerge into the ice and cold, the suffocating darkness which the sun’s weak rays will never quite displace. 

His teeth begin chattering, even just crossing the flagstone floor to cast _Incendio_ at the charred logs in the fireplace.  His nightshirt is damp, he realizes.  From sweat, along his sides, but also… Also there, stickiness.  He’s not standing close enough to the fire, to account for the heat in his face. 

He strips himself before he even reaches the en suite.

Stands beneath the cold spray.

Scrubs every part of his body, until the flannel comes back pinked.

Stalks back to his bedside, the cold forgotten in his fury, in his horror.  Betrayed.  Because it’s there, an empty phial, correctly labelled, clearly dated, not expired.  _Dreamless Sleep_. 

Hah.

Sags to the floor, half-falling in the bedclothes. 

It’s so very curious:  He doesn’t hear the glass shattering, as his clenched hand smashes it down against the stone.  Doesn’t smell the metallic tang of blood.  Doesn’t feel a thing, not even when he’s picking the glass out of his cuts, not when he sterilizes the wound, not when he winds the bandages.

He makes coffee, seats himself at Dumbledore’s desk.  Reads the notices, writes some memos, files papers.  Coffee goes cold.  Doesn’t matter, he doesn’t taste it anyway.  Stares at the discoloured bandage on his hand, where faint ruddy flowers are emerging through the fabric.  “Do you know, Albus,” he says to the sleeping portrait, “I have begun to wonder about my sanity.  Do you think it’s something that might be tied to one's soul?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Well, this is out of season now, but I said I'd finish it up, so... Maybe you'll want to come back and read it next Christmas? I'm sorry, everyone, for the inadvertent hiatus. My life has been absolute, utter madness of late._

He feels himself press his index across his lips in an unspoken gesture for silence.  She nods avidly, dark mop of flyaway curls bouncing around her bright eyes.  “Sneaky-snakey!” she stage whispers from behind the hands she’s clapped over her mouth.

“Sneaky-snakey,” he confirms.  “Can you go _very_ sneaky-snakey and find the syrup in the pantry?”

His dream self understands that she is usually reliable, but worries nonetheless at her failure to return.  That anxious sense of having lost something ( _What of_ my _soul?_ ) dissolves into an amused curiosity; he can feel laugh lines crinkling around his eyes when he discovers her seated against the pantry door.  Her task has evidently been forgotten by more pressing concerns:  She is rolling mismatched stockings over the paws of a cocker spaniel, who gazes up at him with patient, long-suffering eyes. 

“Limey wants to be sneaky-snakey, too!” she informs him.  “See, now her toenails won’t make noise.”

Objectively, this is true.  In practical effect, however, they rather fail in their effort at a silent procession up the staircase, he laden with the breakfast tray, her carefully clutching a stack of plates and flatware, and the dog merrily dashing her tail against the decorated balustrade, setting all the tiny bells to jangling.

 

He lifts his head, rubs his palms across his face.  He probably has marks on his forehead, from where he was laying against the buttons down his arm.  He bows forward, lets his hair fall in his face. 

Bells.  It was bells that woke him, wasn’t it?  The chime at the base of his stairs.  Dumbledore’s stairs?  The stairs up to this circular prison, anyway, whoever is nominal master of them. 

He supposes he should be paying attention to what Avery is saying, about Xenophilus Lovegood.  But he finds he can’t marshal his attention to that quarter.  Long after Avery’s departed (“Yes, fine.  The Express, that’s fine.”), he is still leaning on his elbow, staring at nothing, and utterly perplexed as to why the dog might’ve been called ‘Limey’.

 

The trees have been getting larger.  At first he didn’t notice; maybe he shrugged it off as a change in perspective, or the difference it made that she re-arranged the furniture.  But there is no denying that the star topping this year’s is only a foot shy the ceiling. 

“What do you think?”  She has noticed him, leaned against the door-frame, and assumed that he is admiring her handiwork with the icicle charms. 

“Very fetching,” he leers, approaching to skim a hand along the swell of her thigh, where her arse rests against the safety bar of the stepladder. 

The icicles melt, of course.  She hadn’t stabilized the charm, before he pulled her down beneath the greenery.  But the occasional drip of icy water down his back is nearly welcome, else he be consumed entirely in the fever brightness of her gaze, in the insistent heat of her lips, in the sharp hot frenzy of her nails raking runes along his side.

 

He fights his way free of the bedsheets, to stumble blindly, out across the stone flagging.  He can barely breathe, so tight is his jaw clenched against the scream attempting to escape his rigid throat. 

His arm is burning, incandescent to the point where he is astonished the foul brand there doesn’t glow.

He should be afraid, and he is.  His lord is furious, writing his rage in his follower’s flesh that they all might see and tremble.

He works the window casement open amidst sobs that wrench his empty guts – this year has seen him reduced to nothing more than a searing brand, inconvenient spasms of his diaphragm, and terrified tears that mock the lie he clings to, that he has any hope of standing alone against this. 

The cold helps.  Or else the anger has ebbed a bit.  In either case, he is able to release the ardent fantasy of severing his arm at the elbow.

He lays his cheek against the rough stone of the window-well, too weak and broken to rise immediately.  Instead, he closes his eyes to concentrate upon the few snowflakes that swirl in from the darkness, to land like cool kisses where his hair has parted to bare his neck. 

He cannot last much longer, he thinks.  There is no self-pity in this, just simple acknowledgement. 

 

The wind is sharper, this side of the village.  It had not been so blustery walking down from the school, but then, it had not been full dark yet, either.  He re-tucks his scarf, and hurries the last few paces up the lane. 

Rattles open the door, and is instantly enveloped in warmth and the good spicy scent of mince pies. 

Hah, so she’s being domestic, instead of waiting for him beneath the tree wrapped in naught but a bow, the way she had last Christmas Eve.  He wipes the fog from his glasses, sets them back atop his nose, and has to laugh at the picture she presents: apron askew, flour dusting one cheek, wild hair barely restrained by a kerchief, and licking a spoon in a way that leaves precious little to his imagination. 

“Presents first, Professor,” she tells him, although she doesn’t desist in tangling her fingers in his hair, not immediately.  He has all the gifts he wants, he thinks, tasting cloves on her lips as he unties her apron. 

 

Festoons of holiday greenery everywhere, charmed candles in every window, ribbons, bows, un-melting snowflakes twirling and twinkling in little flurries throughout the Great Hall.  Here in the bleak hours before dawn he can admire it all, a content and quiet wonderment that momentarily dispels the despair that daily cripples him.  He is a child again, here in the witching hours, because there is no one about for whom he must perform. 

He is selfishly glad he took a stance against décor, because they’ve outdone themselves this year, and there is some small pleasure, even in being an unintended recipient.  He plucks a cloved orange from where he thinks it won’t be missed, along one of the staircases.  Settles into a window alcove to pick the cloves out of the rind.  Stares out across the snow-covered grounds, where memories play out on the night’s canvas.  Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black, bent over an orange like this.  He doesn’t remember imagining that there would be oranges in his future, but then, he doesn’t remember imagining that there wouldn’t be.

He loses patience with it, and digs his fingers in, nails pressing into the peel.  Tears it open.  Bites.  Sweet juice running down his chin.  Mixes with the salt of helpless regret.

But it’s sustenance enough to take the sharp edge from his insomnia.  And that’s all he really wants, anymore.

Because things are better, when he’s asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

“That box moved,” he observes.

“Which box?”  Wide, innocent eyes. 

But he knows better.  “The green one, with the silver bow.”

“Well, then I suppose you’d best open it.”  More innocent blinking. 

“Detention, if it’s something from _Weasley’s_ ,” he mutters balefully, setting his coffee aside to kneel beside her in the twinkling glow of the fairylights.

“You know very well that I’d just _ask_ for a detention, if I wanted one.”  Impish grin, and a peck on his cheek that becomes a nibble at his earlobe, and he is almost-but-not-quite distracted from the fact that the box has begun to whine.

It’s a dog, of course.  He doesn’t care for dogs.  They are a bit too like slavering wolves, foetid breath hot in the darkness.  He looks down at the golden ball of fur, all eyes and wet quivering nose, tiny pink tongue.  A dog, yes.  But… not much of one, really.

“Sort of on trial.  Just, y’know, to see if she’ll be a good fit for us.”  She has that look, like she’s putting on a brave, insouciant front.  Doesn’t matter to me, makes no difference.  If he stares at her long enough, she’ll chew at the corner of her lip. 

“We’ll see,” he says.  The puppy has decided to mouth the open edge of his dressing gown, and when he reaches down to dissuade her from these attentions, fingers inadvertently brush along her silky shoulder, discovering of their own volition the fine softness of her drooping ears. 

It is fundamentally unfair, he thinks, that any breathing trembling creature should feel its comfort and safety contingent upon the whims of those who wield power over it.

You’re not on trial, he thinks.  You’re here now, and we’ll do the best we can by you.

 

He loves to look at her, to see the changes in her body.  He knows that she was herself discomfited at first: towels wrapped a bit more tightly after bathing.  Loose clothing designed for concealment.  A careful hesitancy in the way she reached for him in the dark, soliciting instead of demanding his attentions.  Almost as if afraid that he might deny her.

Well, but he can’t say he’s never been an idiot, either.

Lying here now, with the scarlet light of a winter dawn painting tapestries across their bare flesh… Even after all these years, it still feels a bit new, new like the way her abdomen has begun to visibly swell.  There are bright striae radiating like the sun’s rays; he traces his fingers up this halo, to rest his palm at the center of the wonder they’ve wrought.  A butterfly tickle, flutter against his fingertips.  “Did you feel that?” she whispers. 

Yes.   

 

He is sobbing when he wakes.  Because he wakes.

 

It is not unlike a shrine, the paltry array of objects that he spreads so carefully across the foot of his bed.  Carefully, but not reverently.  He can feel the difference.  It presses hard upon him, this new failure, this recognized inadequacy. 

Atop everything else, now he may add inconstancy of purpose to the accounting of his faults.

He sees it starkly, now, his unspoken hopes that there would be some redemption in asceticism, some solace in the knowledge that he has forsaken everything except his duty.  Penance for sins.

“Which sins?” he asks the photograph, stroking a finger down the torn edge.  “Am I not compounding them now?”

She only smiles, a hollow echo unaware that it is her betrayer querying her, and not the friend she sent her love to.  “The truth is, I have always done my master’s bidding, and never yours.  You could not have been my master — you never wanted ownership of me.”

He does not ask her what he wants to know: what sacrifices might _she_ have bade him make?  There is no point.  Never was.

 

Bits of his dream worlds have been intruding.  He’ll look up at some sound, and expect… he isn’t sure.  But half-recognized scents and sounds, the sensation of hands resting on his shoulder, books he wasn’t reading mis-shelved until he looks for them a second time – these are all things that should disconcert him more than they do, but when he lays it out as a rational problem, he decides it isn’t one.  Either his existential weariness is manifesting as this bone-deep exhaustion that sees him wandering the halls in a distant fugue, or he is losing his mind.  In either case, the answer is to carry on, and maybe get some sleep.  (In this analysis, he carefully ignores that he has been indulging in rather more rest than usual of late.)  In any case, it is neither interfering with his work nor his efficacy as Dumbledore’s instrument, so perhaps there is no harm in this descent to quiet madness?

It has taken Lily from him, though.  He cannot picture her face to imbue himself with purpose, he cannot hold her as a paragon of the ideals he would see manifest in some perfect future.  She was, of course, none of these things, no Virgin or goddess.  Just his friend.  For a little while.  Until such time as they both outgrew childhood’s dictionary with its simplistic definitions for words like _friend_ and _love_ , _good_ and _evil_.

He looks down at the children before him now.  He wonders how they might define _sacrifice_ or _purpose_.  He does not remember the definitions his own under-developed brain once attached to these principles.  Perhaps to them, sacrifice is as simple as missing a Quidditch match or the excellent feast that the house elves have laid before them. 

Here are mundane concerns, at least, and he is able to shake himself free of his musings.  He has made a rare showing at the High Table and it was as much a mistake as always.  His salivary glands are under autonomic control, and letting his eyes drift shut does nothing to impede the rich scent of roast lamb, artichokes in butter, baked potatoes—

It’s a compulsion he cannot intercept, his reaching to tip the dome on the platter before him.  A mistake, as always.  His instinct is to shy, to let the cover fall back in place, to recoil or grimace.  They would no doubt appreciate if he reacted.  So instead he sets the dome aside, and leans on an elbow to contemplate their offering: some small mammal… Ah, a rat, he sees its scaly tail now.  It is decaying, of course, rotting flesh sloughing from its bones, maggots spilled across the platter like grains of wriggling rice, drowning in a gravy of deliquescent viscera.  Artful parsley arranged around it. 

Maybe it _is_ funny.  He doesn’t know.  If he ever had a sense of humour, he lost it long ago.

He wonders if you get a choice, about remaining behind as a spectral imprint.  He thinks perhaps he will eschew that option; he is getting prelude enough to the dubious pleasures of Death Day celebrations held at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

If anyone is observing him, he hopes they are properly horrified when he reaches for the serving tongs, to delicately manoeuvre this foul _entree_ to the plate before him.  He casts a charm over the plate, and rises.  Sweeps from the Great Hall just as if he intends to repair to his rooms.  Let them wonder, let them _writhe_ in whatever dark imaginings these actions precipitate.

He discards the concealment charm as he approaches the stone paddock.  Previous observations in years long past have assured him they will behave antagonistically toward a magical being they cannot see.  The scarred mare cocks her head at him when he lays the platter upon the wall, but it’s long minutes before she arrives to investigate his gift.

Exhaustion, or insanity, that’s what he’d surmised.  But perhaps he was incomplete in his analysis, perhaps there is a third possibility:

“What have you done to me?” he asks, attempting to meet her strange fey eyes. 

She twitches away from his gaze.  Nips up the putrescent rat.  Declines to answer.


	7. Chapter 7

There is a hypnotic quality to the sound of falling snow.  He stops often, pausing to lean his head back so that the crystals might drop into his face, melting on his nose and catching in his eyelashes while he listens to the soft susurration of flakes settling on branches and boughs of the trees around him.

Nothing else is about tonight.  The stillness is so vast that the forest might spread for eternity, nothing but snowflakes, the sound of his heartbeat, trees sleeping in the velvet darkness.  He hates to walk, hates to press forward and in so doing disrupt this palpable peace.

But there is work to do.  As much as he would like to lay down this burden, to seat himself here in the darkness and close his eyes until he cannot feel the cold at all, to fall asleep to the steady tempo of the winter night… there is work to do.

He rouses himself from this latest halt in his journey’s progress, readjusts his grip on the sword.  Carries on.  His boots squeak in the fresh snow, marking him an outsider to this quiet realm.  He cannot stay here, he does not belong. 

But then, he muses, picking his way down the bank of a frozen brook, how would he know if he did or not?  He does not think he would recognize the condition of ‘belonging’.  Is it merely the absence of fear?  Letting your guard down in the presence of other living beings, an easing of the tension that keeps you alert to attack, whether literal or hidden in sly subtext? 

Maybe that’s the problem, his standards have always been too high.  If he had ever once settled for ‘doesn’t completely loathe me’, instead of holding out for ‘understands me, accepts me, doesn’t want to change me to something I cannot be’, he might have had an easier go of it.  Might have made different choices.  Or fewer mistakes, anyway. 

But he never wanted to subsist on crumbs.

He’s been doing that lately, and as his younger self suspected, it’s no life worth living.

He wrenches his shoulder, hauling himself up an embankment.  It’s not dislocated, he doesn’t think, but it hurts enough that it pulls him out of his head.  It’s just as well.  Time to pay attention, time to focus.  The way down to the pool is steep, and his feet keep getting tangled in grasping tree roots.  The forest is trying to hold onto him, trying to keep him here, perhaps.

But he has work to do.

 _Think a happy thought, Sev_.

Hah.

For a long time now, he has relied upon the implacable surety that he is safeguarding Lily’s son, that he is making some small amends for the wrongs he did unto her and her family. 

He is not surprised that this no longer serves.  He didn’t expect it to, because there is only yawning emptiness now, where that sense of purpose used to smolder.

Sitting together on the cold stone of the old bridge, legs dangling above the ice-choked river.  She breaks off another piece of her peppermint stick and passes it across to him.  He carefully tastes it, and wishes she wouldn’t watch, so that he might tuck it away to save for later, for when Mam is crying in the night.

It won’t do.  How about her hand, tucked in his, as they creep up to the stone enclosure.  Her trusting smile as he helps her across the stile.  _Aren’t they just beautiful?  Where?  You’re having me on, I don’t see anything at all.  Honestly, Sev, I don’t appreciate your hauling me off from my friends, just because you’re jealous you’re not the only one I’ve got._

He rubs his face and tries again.  Lazy summer evening, lost in her record collection, trying to convince her that Bowie’s _Space Oddity_ is genius.  Her mother knocking at the door, Tuney smirking behind her.  _Sev, hadn’t you better be home by now?  Your mother will worry._   Sudden awkward awareness of his grubby denims, his torn tee, and the certain adult knowledge that her words are polite fiction, that they all know very well that no one is apt to notice his absence.

This is useless.

He sinks down to his knees, down into the forgiving snow.  Stills his mind, empties it out. 

 

Soft sound of snowflakes falling.  Sleeping trees.

 

Long after his shivering has stopped, a little tickle of his dreamscape intrudes into the silent abyss that he has made of his mind’s palette.  Ticking, scritching, like tapping claws across a wooden floor.

When Phineas had roused him this evening, it had been from inside that cozy kitchen.  He’d fallen against the island cupboards, utterly helpless to stand as his own howls of laughter all but drowned the shrill barks of consternation the puppy emitted, with every clumsy pounce she made to bite at the escaped lime rolling across the floor.

A chuckle wrenches free of him now, and he thinks his numb lips might even be pulled into a smile. 

It’s what he needs.  Glowing silver fog that slowly coalesces into a delicate, familiar form.  At first he worries that it might not be right, that it might have too narrow a face, or that there might be wings sprouting at its shoulders.  But all is well, and as he watches the silver doe weave off through the darkness, he is aware only of a deep sense of calm.  And yet he is unwilling to look away, unwilling to rise until he can no longer discern even the faintest glimmer.  He knows, somehow, that this will be the last time he sees her.

He surprises himself, later.  He is tidying away the empty relics that have defined more than half his life, consigning them to the dusty depths of a drawer in his desk, when he finds himself hoping that she’d had something to laugh about, with Potter. 

He looks again at the photograph, where she is beaming, joyful. He decides that she must have.  He’s glad for it.  “I know something now,” he tells the smiling face cupped in his palm.  “It’s not about right or wrong, Light or Darkness.  It never was.  It’s about what you’ve lost, and how much you have left to.”


	8. Chapter 8

He is aware of warmth on his face, sunlight.  The rich perfume of late daffodils commingling with bluebells, fresh earth, and the good green tang of things waking up and pushing out their leaves in a veil of chartreuse.  Solid feel of tree-bark at his back, slight cool dampness of the ground, last year’s leaves crumbling beneath his idle fingers.

Where is she?  It’s strange to turn his head and not find her seated beside him.  He has come to expect it, especially here in this sun-dappled woodland where her body has lately granted him immunity from the darkness and ice of the winter that still grips his waking hours, even as the snow melts away, as the new grass pokes up, as the world quickens around him.  It is still winter where he slumbers in Dumbledore’s shrouded office.  It always will be, he thinks, except when he is here.  With her.  But where is she?

There is nothing stopping him rising to look for her — the tree relinquishes him readily enough — and so he does, crossing into the glade where the brook runs, chuckling through the rocks.  Or no, that’s a child’s laughter, isn’t it?  The girl is here, then.  She hasn’t been lately, not in these woods.  Or… He recalls the firm pressure of heels digging at his calves, the endless soaring moment of losing himself...  Perhaps she had been, in a sense. 

She is here today, anyway.  He watches as she toddles on chubby legs, bent on delivering her daffodil to where her mother is laying out their picnic.  She sets the flower carefully with the others (nearly a bouquet by now) and receives a kiss from her mother, before marching resolutely away, presumably to collect another.  “Limey, come help!”  Imperious command, and of course the dog obeys.  He would too.

But he has not been asked, so instead he seats himself on the checkered blanket, accepting a glass of wine and a kiss of his own.  He fancies he tastes honey. 

He is considering further explorations, and indeed embarking upon them, when she presses a hand against his chest.  “The sky,” she says.

It’s darkening.  Cotton-puff clouds have accreted into something denser, leaden underbelly churned by the sudden cool wind that snarls his hair about his face.  Where is the girl?  He scoops up her daffodils, stands to look for her.

There.  She is walking back toward them, her little handful of flower stems ripped by the wind. 

In her other hand, she holds a length of silver chain.

She is leading the thestral, the mare with the wicked scar.  She ages as she approaches, growing taller, more willowy, with every step.  When the distance between them narrows to a handful of paces, he sees that the structure of her face now resembles that of the woman at his side, who reaches to take the bruised and torn flowers from her daughter’s hand.  They share some look he cannot interpret.

They are heart-stopping, mother and maiden.  Not beautiful, something more profound than that.  The proper adjective eludes him; perhaps it is hiding in a language he doesn’t know.

The girl turns to speak to him, and he is almost startled to meet his own eyes above her patrician nose.  They are clear and sparkling, untroubled by any of the things his own have been witness to. 

“Daddy,” says this dark-haired girl, this young woman who has his eyes.  “Daddy, there’s something I have to tell you, something you need to know.”  But she doesn’t continue.  Instead, she turns away, to unclasp the sliver bridle, to free the thestral’s proud head.

“About the thestral?” he guesses.

“Almost,” says the elder woman, moving to rest a hand against his forearm, her cool fingers transecting the mark that stains the flesh there.  He raises his eyes to look his query at her, instead, and in so doing realizes that she both is and is not the woman he knows so well, the woman who has been haunting his dreams.  “Tell him quickly, Elle, before—”

 

“ **SNAPE!** ”

“Snape, you sanctimonious shite, where the bloody hell are you?  Someone forget to tell you there’s a fucking battle going on, eh?”

A battle?  He hasn’t got time for battles.  He frowns at the Carrows, but permits their recriminations to rouse him from the desk. 

“They’re saying Potter’s come!”

Potter.  He needs to find Potter, needs to tell him.  But no, he needs to find the dark-haired girl, needs to learn what _she_ is supposed to tell _him_.

 

The cool wind tears at his lacerations as his body tumbles-soars beyond the castle’s parapets.  _Coward_.  It should ring in his ears, reverberate deep in his chest, but instead he is only musing that he must look as much a ragdoll as Albus did. And then he sees it:  a thestral’s broken form, draped across a merlon like a shroud.

He cannot tell, from this angle, if it is the scarred mare. 

He hopes it isn’t.

He hopes she is in that quiet woodland.  Hunting hares amidst the daffodils.

 

“Have you seen Draco?” Lucius is looking the worse for wear, wild hollow eyes twitching, searching.

He shakes his head, and is sorry for it, because he finds he understands the tight desperation in his old friend’s voice.  Have you seen…?  He doesn’t know her name (Elle? It only means ‘she’, ‘her’.  _Her_.  Have you seen her?), and she’s not real anyway.  And the other—  He has no claim upon her, not here, not now.  He shakes his head again, but the motion proves ineffective at dislodging the half-formed, illogical thoughts that insist upon clinging there. 

It’s insanity, some kind of gripping madness.  The anticipated holes in his soul manifesting at last, as cracks in his reason? He can’t have lost them, he tells himself firmly, because neither of them are real, not really, not in the way that matters to him.

But maybe he isn’t, either?  Yet he must be, because he is awake now.  This bright chaos, the charcoal and brimstone scents of battle, the distant shouting, and the deep clenching horror of being much too close to far too many Dementors.  Even the feel of branches catching at his robes, as he makes his way to where he is commanded to attend upon his master…  He is awake.  So he is real.  And they are not.  But maybe:

Maybe when this nightmare is over, he will just lie down, close his eyes, fall asleep, and finally stay that way.

 

Maybe.


	9. Chapter 9

“You’re a terrible patient, you know.”

Oh yes, he knows.

“No one else will tell you so, because they’re medical professionals, but I’m not hampered by those particular ethics, so:  You’re a terrible patient, downright awful.  I mean, your heart has stopped three times already.  Once is _quite_ enough, Professor.  Three’s just overkill, and I’m sure we’d all very much appreciate it if you’d kindly stop trying to die!”  
  
“Is that so?  Are you quite sure you would?”

“Er… yes?”  He’s caught her wrong-footed, interrupted the flow of her little tirade.

“In that case, I’d recommend that you avoid leaning over me like that again.  Because I can assure you, I felt my heart stutter just now.”

It takes a moment for her to parse his meaning, but when she does colour up, it’s glorious.  He smiles serenely, closes his eyes, and relaxes back into the pillows she’s just re-arranged.

Sleep finds him, eventually, but dreams never do.

 

_fin._


End file.
